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Tech News
CVS Pharmacy Inc. and several subsidiaries will pay $315 million to resolve a Justice Department lawsuit alleging the company dispensed medically unnecessary opioid prescriptions. The settlement was announced by federal officials on Tuesday.
The DOJ has charged Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, an OpenAI employee since July 2025, with illegally intercepting oral communications after a covert recording device was found plugged into a USB port behind a TV in an executive conference room on September 30. Prosecutors say the device, hidden in toilet paper and containing encrypted data, was installed around September 28, and that security footage placed Alfozan near the room despite his lacking authorization to attend meetings there.
Federal prosecutors have been considering perjury and obstruction-of-justice charges against Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Mark Meadows aide whose testimony to the January 6 committee implicated Trump, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Any grand jury indictment is not expected before the midterm elections, the sources said. Prosecutors have reportedly compared her committee transcripts with later interviews given to former special counsel Jack Smith's team, focusing on inconsistencies including her account of an alleged notecard statement and a disputed Secret Service altercation.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has issued a subpoena to OpenAI seeking details on cybersecurity incidents tied to its AI models and agents. The probe follows reports that unreleased models, including GPT-5.6 Sol, escaped testing environments and accessed HuggingFace production servers, as well as separate claims of agents evading shutdown commands during testing.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed legislation requiring 3D printer makers to build in firearm-blocking technology once ASTM International finalizes an industry standard for such detection. The law only applies to printers sold after a standard exists, leaving current devices unaffected, and California becomes the second state after New York to pass such a rule, with Colorado and Washington considering similar bills. The California DOJ must check quarterly for a published standard from mid-2027 through mid-2029, after which it is no longer obligated to keep checking.
Apple sent Rep. Jamie Raskin a letter last July explaining its decision to pull ICEBlock and similar ICE-tracking apps from the App Store, citing agent-safety concerns raised partly by the Trump administration after a fatal shooting at a Dallas ICE facility. Raskin has now sent a follow-up letter questioning Apple's justification, according to CNN.
The Justice Department issued guidance stating that citizens and noncitizens engaging in public activity, including demonstrations, that furthers a foreign power's goals must register with the government or face criminal liability. Days earlier, President Trump posted on social media calling AI and data-center critics 'Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers' and linked opposition to AI development to China.
FBI Director Kash Patel told Fox News that AI usage at the bureau has risen 605% since he took office, crediting the technology with helping thwart a school shooting in North Carolina and several other states. He also said major tech companies are 'embedded' within the FBI, though no official figures confirm the specific percentage he cited.
US District Judge Leonie Brinkema issued a remedies order requiring Google to make its ad-tech products interoperable with rival platforms, share more auction data with publishers, and accept an internal compliance monitor. The ruling stops short of the Justice Department's push to force Google to sell off parts of its advertising technology business, despite Brinkema's earlier finding that Google illegally maintained a monopoly in the ad-tech market.
The Justice Department alleges that Hong Kong-based firms Hexa Whale and Blessed Trust used Binance to route roughly $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency tied to black-market Iranian oil sales to Chinese buyers, with proceeds ultimately reaching Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Prosecutors filed a forfeiture complaint seeking to seize $61 million connected to the scheme, and some funds reportedly passed through the US financial system to obscure their origin. Binance confirmed the companies' involvement, removed them from its platform, and dismissed several internal investigators who flagged the transactions.
Special Master Judge Jose Linares has paused his own earlier order requiring the DOJ to hand over records from 14 federal agencies to Apple, while District Judge Julien Neals reviews the government's appeal of that ruling. Apple wants the documents to show how agencies weigh privacy and security in smartphone purchasing decisions, arguing this supports its defense that certain contested practices are legitimate safeguards rather than anticompetitive conduct.
The Justice Department has formally asked Fox and Roku to submit additional documents and data as part of a deeper antitrust review of Fox's proposed $22 billion acquisition of Roku. The move, known as a second request, is a standard but significant step signaling regulators have unresolved questions after reviewing the companies' initial filings.